a lovely dream
by lejuge
Summary: Haise has a dream about someone Kaneki knew. Inspired by auideas.tumblr. com/post/125803995257


He was in the checkered room again. A welcome, if somewhat apprehensive, guest as always, Haise looked around for the boy named Kaneki. Normally, he would be sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, asking Haise to recognize him. But today, the boy and his chair were missing./p

"Where is he?" Haise asked himself. He glanced around the room and noticed a door handle on one of the walls. He hadn't noticed it during his previous visits to the room, but then again, he was usually preoccupied with someone else every time. He walked up to the handle, twisted it, and pulled.

Nothing happened. It was as if someone had installed the door handle there only to mock him, to make him look silly for trying to leave a room without a door. Haise sighed and looked around the room again, wondering if Kaneki had returned while his back was turned. The room was just as empty as it had been when Haise had arrived. Bored, Haise sat down and waited for something to happen. He tried to think about what he had been doing right before he had entered the room, but he couldn't remember. Yet another gap in his memory.

"Oh! I'm so silly!" Haise said. "I should try pushing the door handle!" He got up and tried the door handle again. The wall moved out and away from him, and Haise found himself in the middle of a sea of white clouds.

He stepped outside the room, and looked back to find that he had exited a black dome-shaped building. Worried about accidentally locking himself out of his only known portal back to reality, Haise left the door open and ventured into the sky. He found that he could walk on the clouds, which were mostly solid but slightly squishy, and it seemed that the stretched out into the distance forever. There were no landmarks in the distance, no figures that moved and lived, and Haise was once again alone in his mind.

With nothing better to do, he began to wander through this new world. He couldn't tell if he was going in a straight line or not, as the clouds covered whatever tracks he made. Looking back after walking around for a few minutes, he saw the dome in the distance, but he paid it no more attention and continued walking forward.

"Kaneki!" Haise called out. "Where are you?" His calls faded into the distance, unanswered. Dejected, he laid down on the clouds. Above him, a beautiful blue marble of a planet (he guessed that it was Earth) hung motionless among the twinkling stars in the dark. Out of boredom, he began to count the stars. He wondered what kind of stars he had seen when he was "Kaneki". He wondered if his colleagues at the CCG and the Quinx could see him here from, as if they could see a distant mass of clouds in the middle of space, and Haise lying right in the middle of it. Come to think of it, wouldn't that be a funny sight? Wouldn't it look like he was lying down but upright? Haise chuckled to himself for a moment.

But when he stopped laughing, the laughter didn't end. A soft, distant giggling continued on, and Haise sat up, looking around for its source. He noticed a bobbing figure in the distance, and he ran towards it. As he got closer, he realized that the person – a woman – was spinning around, like a ballerina. She would gracefully leap to and fro occasionally, her long purple hair trailing behind. Haise was enchanted.

"Um…excuse me, miss – ," Haise said, but just as he began to introduce himself, the woman leapt far away from him. He could have sworn that he saw her feet sparkling as she made the jump. The woman began to twirl again, waving her arms gracefully to invisible music, paying no attention to Haise. He walked up to her again, but she leapt away again. He walked towards her, she leapt away from him, again and again. Haise began to run towards her as she jumped away, but each time her jumps became farther and farther. He didn't know why he was so desperate to get to her; he had never met this woman before. He tripped over himself, falling on his hands and knees, exhausted by his pursuit.

He clutched at his chest, wondering why his heart pounded so loudly when he saw the dancing woman. Was she a woman from Kaneki's past? Even so, why did he, Haise Sasaki, feel so distraught every time she leapt away? Why did she leave him? Why did they all leave him? Overwhelmed by sadness, he began to sob and crouched over, his head touching the clouds.

"Don't leave me!" Haise shouted. "Don't leave me alone!" His tears passed through the clouds below him, becoming rain for a world below him, if there was one. He rested his heads on the clouds, and waited for this sadness to pass. Eventually, the sobs stopped, and only his face was still red from crying. He picked his head back up and began to sit up when he saw a pair of feet just inches from his face.

He jerked his head up and found himself staring into the calm smile of the woman who had just been dancing away from him. Her purple eyes concentrated on him with a certain warmth, not that of a lover, but that of a mother. A soothing, familiar smile that welcomed him back home. Haise was once again entranced by this beautiful woman from Kaneki's past. Another rush of emotion hit him, but it was not sadness that consumed him, but excitement and enthusiasm. Suddenly, he spoke.

"I love you."

And although he did love her in that very moment, he in fact did not speak those words. He had just opened his mouth when he heard another voice say that phrase that binds people together forever. The woman turned her head to the side to look at the confessor, and Haise followed her gaze to find that it was the white-haired child that lived in his mind who had spoken. Kaneki stared up at the woman, who now gave him the same loving smile that she had only given Haise just a few seconds ago. From behind his back, he held out a small bouquet of flower buds.

"I love you, Rize," Kaneki said. Haise watched in jealousy as Rize's smile grew wider as she accepted the boy's gift. The flower buds bloomed and unfurled in a spiral, sending out small clouds of sparkling mist. Still smiling, she kneeled down to Kaneki's height and hugged him.

"Thank you, Ken," Rize said. The boy smiled, and then turned his head to Haise.

"She's your mother, too, Haise," Kaneki said. "We won't leave you alone." He extended a hand towards the man, who hesitated to accept. Rize leaned back from her embrace with Kaneki and also opened an arm towards Haise. Her smile was the only invitation that he needed, and Haise leaned forward to join the pair. But as he reached out, he lost his balance, and fell forward instead, falling through the clouds –

 _beep beep beep beep beep beep bee-_

Haise smacked the alarm clock, knocking it to the ground. He sat up on his bed, rubbing his face while contemplating the dream he just had. But, he was too tired from being woken up in the middle of a dream, and he fell back down on the bed, staring at the bookshelf on the wall across from him. Groggy, he mumbled to himself.

"Kaneki…you fell in love with a beautiful woman…"


End file.
